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Sarah Bunin Benor, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies
Dr. Benor is Associate Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at the Los Angeles campus. She teaches about the social science of American Jews, as well as about language and culture. She mentors students in the School of Jewish Nonprofit Management and serves as Adjunct Associate Professor in the Linguistics Department at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include Jewish languages, American Jewish identity and culture, sociolinguistic variation, language contact, ethnography, and Orthodox Jews. She is the founder, producer, and editor of the Jewish Language Research Website, and she is the founder and moderator of the Jewish Languages Mailing List.
Areas of Expertise
- American Jewish language and identity
- Sociology and anthropology of American Jews
- Jewish languages
- Yiddish
- Orthodox Jews
- Newly Orthodox Jews
- Sociolinguistic variation
- Language socialization
- Ethnography
Education
- Ph.D., M.A., Stanford University, Linguistics (2004)
- B.A., Columbia University, Comparative Literature, Linguistics, Yiddish (1997)
Lecture Topics - (Descriptions)
Dr. Benor has been giving interactive, engaging lectures to synagogues and other Jewish groups for over a decade. The lectures below can be offered individually or in sequences of three or more as part of a scholar-in-residence weekend. All talks draw from Dr. Benor’s academic research but are presented in ways that are accessible and interesting to the general public.
- American Jewish Identity and Engagement
- jPod: Trends in American Jewish Identity and Community
- Jewish Engagement Among 20- and 30-Something Jews
- Mensch, Bentsh, and Balagan: Language as a Marker of Jewish Engagement
- Jewish Language
- Jewish Languages Around the World
- Do American Jews Speak a Jewish Language?
- Di Goyim, Loz Vedres, and The Gentiles: How Jews Refer to Non-Jews in Yiddish, Ladino, and English
- Orthodox Judaism
- Language and Ideology Among Strictly Orthodox Jews
- Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism
- Yiddish
- Chutzpah to Chidush: A Century of Yiddish-Influenced English in America
- Redt yidish az di tate-mame zoln nisht farshteyn: Speak Yiddish so your parents won't understand!
- Hemshekh fun dor tsu dor: Bringing Yiddish to Young People
Recent Publications
- Benor, Sarah Bunin. Forthcoming. Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism. Rutgers University Press, 2012.
- Benor, Sarah Bunin. Forthcoming. "Echoes of Yiddish in the Speech of 21st-Century American Jews." In Choosing Yiddish: Studies on Yiddish Literature, Culture, and History, ed. Lara Rabinovitch, Hannah Pressman, and Shiri Goren. Detroit: Wayne State Press.
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Benor, Sarah Bunin. 2011. “Young Jewish Leaders in Los Angeles: Strengthening the Jewish People in Conventional and Unconventional Ways.” In The New Jewish Leaders: Reshaping the American Jewish Landscape, ed., Jack Wertheimer. Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press. 112-158.
- Benor, Sarah Bunin and Steven M. Cohen. 2011. “Talking Jewish: The ‘Ethnic English’ of American Jews.” In Ethnicity and Beyond: Theories and Dilemmas of Jewish Group Demarcation. Studies in Contemporary Jewry, vol. 25. Eli Lederhendler, ed. Institute of Contemporary Jewry and Oxford University Press. 62-78.
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Benor, Sarah Bunin. 2011. “Mensch, Bentsh, and Balagan: Variation in the American Jewish Linguistic Repertoire.” Language and Communication 31/2, special issue on “Jewish Languages in the Age of the Internet.” 141-154.
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Benor, Sarah Bunin. 2010. Ethnolinguistic Repertoire: Shifting the Analytic Focus in Language and Ethnicity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 14/2. 159-183.
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Benor, Sarah Bunin. 2009. "Do American Jews Speak a 'Jewish Language'? A Model of Jewish Linguistic Distinctiveness." Jewish Quarterly Review 99/2. 230-269.
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Benor, Sarah Bunin. 2008. "Towards a New Understanding of Jewish Language in the 21st Century." Religion Compass 2/6. 1062-1080.
- Benor, Sarah Bunin and Roger Levy. 2006. "The Chicken or the Egg? A Probabilistic Analysis of English Binomials." Language 82/2, June 2006. 233-278.
- Benor, Sarah Bunin. 2004. "Talmid Chachams and Tsedeykeses: Language, Learnedness, and Masculinity Among Orthodox Jews." Jewish Social Studies 11/1. 147-170.
- Benor, Sarah Bunin and Steven M. Cohen. 2009. "Survey of American Jewish Language and Identity." Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion (summary of survey results for general audience).
- Benor, Sarah Bunin and Bruce A. Phillips. 2009. "The HUC Masters Thesis: An Important Contribution to the Field of Jewish Communal Service." Journal of Jewish Communal Service 84/3-4, special issue on "The HUC-JIR School of Jewish Communal Service: Celebrating the Past, Shaping the Future." 228-231.
- Benor, Sarah Bunin. 2009. "Lexical Othering in Judezmo: How Ottoman Sephardim Refer to Non-Jews." In Languages and Literatures of Sephardic and Oriental Jews: Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress. David M. Bunis, ed. Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute and Misgav Yerushalayim. 65-85.
- Spolsky, Bernard and Sarah Bunin Benor. 2006. "Jewish Languages." In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Keith Brown, ed. 2nd edition. Vol. 6. Oxford: Elsevier. 120-124.
- Benor, Sarah Bunin. 2004. Second Style Acquisition: The Linguistic Socialization of Newly Orthodox Jews. Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, Linguistics.
- Benor, Sarah Bunin. 2001. “The Learned /t/: Phonological Variation in Orthodox Jewish English.” In Penn Working Papers in Linguistics: Selected Papers from NWAV 29. 1-16.
- Benor, Sarah. 2000. "Loan Words in the English of Modern Orthodox Jews: Yiddish or Hebrew?" In Steve S. Chang et al, ed. Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 1999. Parasession on Loan Word Phenomena. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society. 287-298.
Courses
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